Shreyasi Choudhury, Ph.D.

Academic Title

Postdoctoral Associate

Contact Information

phone: (352) 273-7413
email: shreyasi83@ufl.edu

Lab

R2-236/R2-240

About

Shreyasi received her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of North Texas Health Science Center, Texas in 2014. Her research was focused on studying the role of caspase-7 in retinal neuronal cell apoptosis, especially in photoreceptor and retinal ganglion cell death. By studying the two different disease models, T17M RHO Autosomal Dominant Retinitis Pigmentosa (ADRP) model and Optic Nerve Crush (ONC) model she found that caspase-7 plays a critical role in photoreceptor and RGC death and inhibition of caspase-­7 activity may be a novel therapeutic strategy for treating retinal degenerative diseases.

Besides studying the molecular mechanisms that underlie retinal degenerative diseases she is also interested in developing gene therapy for treatment of retinal diseases, which brought her to the University of Florida since it is home to some of the world’s leading researchers in gene therapy.

Her current research is focused on developing safer gene delivery to rod and cone photoreceptors in fragile, diseased retinas that are prone to surgery induced retinal detachment. She is actively involved in developing novel AAV vectors capable of transducing photoreceptors following a safer, less invasive intravitreal injection. She is also working on the optimization of the AAV capsids to confer better adhesion to the inner limiting membrane and traffic to the outer retina while maintaining or gaining photoreceptor tropism.